Bandcamp
After producing most of Danny Brown’s Atrocity Exhibition, Paul White has returned with a new beat tape Everything You've Forgotten. You can name your price for a download at Bandcamp. After the first listen, what immediately stands out is how many genres are reconfigured for a hip-hop context, in ways that make you question what you think a "hip-hop context" has to entail.
A mixture of sampling and instrumentation guides White's practice. Danny Brown is sent yelping a hook over a skipping Afropop loop, Silver Apples synths mewl of stuttering neon landscapes, and a pedal steel bounces along to a beat straight out of an Avalanches recording session. The project's success comes partially down to the fact that that White has few rivals when it comes to digging for the best nuggets, in his own music and other sources: one of the track's interludes is a scene from Sing Street, a 2016 film by the director of Once. "You need to learn how not to play," a character says "That's the trick, that's rock and roll, and that takes practice... rock and roll is a risk. You risk being ridiculed." More than a few producers could stand to unlearn a few things from Paul White.
